Henry Stern

Since the story about her aides channeling money into fake organizations broke, Christine Quinn has stressed that said aides were under direct orders for her not to do so. (She also says she knew about the practice of putting money aside, but not about the phantom organizations).  read more »

Henry Stern is in with another column about Albany politics, in which he finds fault with Albany District Attorney David Soares for saying that the governor did nothing criminal.

From Stern’s column:

We do not know which is worse: the inquisitor before whom everyone is guilty, like Savonarola or Torquemada, or the Three Monkeys, see, hear and speak no evil, before whom everyone is innocent. Probably Soares, who was the Working Families Party candidate for DA against the Democratic organization, represents both worlds.

Soares received substantial campaign contributions from George Soros, the billionaire sponsor of moveon.com. He received the money on the basis of a commitment not to prosecute minor drug offenders, although sometimes state law required it. Soares has lost credibility because of the double standard he takes with different state-wide public officials. His conduct in these cases makes his political ambition another casualty of Troopergate, nee Choppergate.

  

Henry Stern emailed me yesterday to take issue with the way I characterized his recent column on Eliot Spitzer. (Headline: Henry Stern Sticks a Fork in Spitzer.)

The former city parks commissioner says he's still supporting the governor, and that his criticisms--brutal as they may have been--are intended spur Spitzer to get his act together. Because, as Stern says, Spitzer is "the only governor we have."

Here's his full email:

Thank you from quoting the article I wrote on the governor's problems. I appreciate that.

Please allow me to provide some additional material to your readers. The fork that your headine [sic] said I figuratively stuck into Governor Spitzer in my blog was intended to prod him into action, not to celebrate his being so well cooked he could be devoured.

Your quotes were accurate, but in at least three other places in the blog I urged him to do better and suggested ways that he could.

Here they are:

"We would recommend a vigorous, substantive program of reform, a substantial reduction of state expenditures, and the appointment of persons of stature and courage to his staff and toe the agencies.

Cast a wider net." "...we want both the State and the City to do well. The success of an administration depends on the work of people at the bottom as well as the top. They must be motivated and encouraged to do their best."

"...we want Governor Spitzer to do his best, and we want people to treat him with dignity and respect, in the hope that that will encourage him to do the same. He is, after all, the only governor we have. He deserves a fresh start."

 

Former city parks commissioner and longtime political agitator Henry Stern is giving up hope on Eliot Spitzer. In his recent column, emailed to, um, everybody, Stern wrote:

"Through a succession of miscues, Governor Spitzer has forfeited his position of  leadership,  He has made intemperate statements, used foul language at inappropriate occasions, acted and spoken autocratically, denounced colleagues personally, caved where he should have stood firm, engaged recently in Nixonian behavior, and pretended not to know what most rational people think he must have known, for if he did not he was more foolish than they believe him to be.  Compare his public persona with that of a Bloomberg, a Giuliani, or a Koch and observe the difference.

"There is not one public official in the state, Democrat or Republican, who defends the way he has conducted himself.   This is not an ideological issue, he is neither a radical or a reactionary, his ideology, his views are mainstream liberal . Senator Craig did him a great favor by taking people's minds off the governor's travails,and hopefully this will continue for a while."

 

John McCain thinks it isn't enough that Larry Craig is stepping down from his committee assignments in the Senate, and has urged him to resign.

But closer to home, political gadfly Henry Stern thinks Craig should hold onto his seat. In a column Stern just emailed around, he wrote:

The voters of the State of Idaho are Craig's employers. They can vote him out when he comes up for re-election in 2008. He has been an elected official for 33 years. Should he resign now, for having deceived the voters for a generation? I would think not. If every public official who fooled the voters had to resign his position, there would be more special elections to fill vacancies than regular elections. And the people who won the special elections might also deceive the voters.

If local precedent is any guide, Stern has a point. After all, how many members of the New York State legislature are holding onto their committee assignments after having been indicted or arrested?

As I’ve been waiting for the right occasion to call 311, the Mayor’s complaint hotline,  read more »

As I’ve been waiting for the right occasion to call 311, the Mayor’s complaint hotline, and it c  read more »

Mike's decision to fire solitaire guy reminded me of something Henry Stern wrote a couple of weeks ago:

"No commissioner has been publicly fired in the last four years, no matter how many innocent people are killed as a result of employee failures on his or her watch."

And Bloomberg's unwillingness to fire anybody, in private and public sectors, is kind of legendary. But then, the Mayor has been having a tough second term. For all the high-concept PR gambits (guns, Republicans, Ground Zero) there's a sense that his control of the workings of government has faltered with the departure of the mechanics like Marc Shaw.

For example, it's hard to think of a first-term snafu on the scale of yesterday's property tax embarassment. Maybe Mike was feeling the need to assert control.

City Council members hoping for a quick roll-back of term limits before this session ends will apparently be disappointed.

Henry Stern writes on his Web site:

"We received a call this afternoon from Steve Sigmund, director of communications for Council Speaker Gifford Miller. He told us that the Speaker would not initiate, participate in, or support any effort by the Council in 2005 to revise or repeal the term limits imposed by public referenda."

This, Stern says, makes a "coup" less likely. Whew.  read more »

But with the candidates to replace Miller promising some change to term limits -- how else will they get support? -- this seems unlikely to end here.

At least half of New York's political class is off atoning today. The Politicker has plenty to atone for, too, but since I'm here in the office, I hope that giving you something to chew on during a sodden and mostly silent news day will serve as penance of sorts.

In an effort to widen our group hug (and because I know you're such an affectionate bunch), I'm going to tiptoe through our neighbors' tulips for the first-ever Politicker Blog Stroll, a look at what's happening in the local political blogosphere. If you think we're missing any gems, please send them my way for future strolls. Here we go...

Over at New York Civic, Henry Stern, former Parks Commissioner, muses about life after November, sizing up the prospects for Giff, Weiner, Thompson, Carrion, and their colleagues in today's forward-looking article ("Polls Say: Stick a Fork in 2005. Let's Start to Think About 2009"). He's also just introduced a comments section; it's called "Starblog." (Would "Sparblog" have been more appropriate? Wait and see.)

This week, The Wonkster, Gotham Gazette's bloggy stepchild, has been tracking the teachers' contract debate and editorial responses to the diffused subway threat, and took time out to offer a brief - yet nostalgic - nod to the Times Square HoJo.

At Alarming News, spunky "non-liberal" Karol identifies an amusing, yet counterproductive, paradigm born of frustration with the prez (aka: May the country go to hell, so Bush can be blamed).

The folks over at The New York Connection really want to kick Brian Ellner in the tuchas. Will they post on M-Lo M-Later?

If you're sick of my bad puns and sunny nature (and have already read the comments section twice), get today's vitriol fix over at Brian Lehrer's blog. Perhaps inspired by the popularity of the scanned Miers-Bush correspondence, Brian has scanned a piece of demented hate mail for your delectation.

DMIBLog asserts a need for political leadership to reverse tuition hikes at CUNY and SUNY.

At The Daily Gotham, a local off-shoot of popular lefty blog DailyKos, Liza rallies for a unified Ferrer push and coins a new phrase that I adore: "Campaign Velveeta."

Over at the Village Voice's Power Plays blog, Jarrett Murphy suggests a last resort to give the Ferrer campaign some much-needed juice, or at least some attention. Stunts! But somehow it's hard to imagine Freddy sleeping under that bridge...

And both G.O.P. and the City and Slant Point are abuzz with backstory on a subway terror warning email, which circulated days before the official announcement. Both bloggers received the email and debunk the Daily News' "Rich Got Terror Tip" take on it; the former takes a funny and sarcastic swipe at the theory: "In other news, only the rich and powerful have been informed about a large inheritance for the taking in Nigeria."  read more »

And now my eyes are sore. So that's it for the Politicker's first Blog Stroll - thanks to everyone who has been posting on such a sleepy day.

The Bloomberg campaign plans to circulate independent nominating petitions to put Mike on the November ballot on the Liberal Party line, The Politicker has learned.

Also on the petitions: D.A. Robert Morgenthau.

Technically speaking, they're doing this independently of the old Liberal Party, which lost its ballot line in 2002 when Andrew Cuomo failed to get 50,000 votes for Governor. But the move has the blessing of Liberal Party chairman Henry Stern.

The campaign plans to begin petitioning later this week, and needs to file 7,500 signatures between August 16 and 23.  read more »

A side-note: If Bloomberg remains on the Republican and Independence Party lines and adds the Liberal Party, he will still appear on the fall ballot only twice: "Republican/Liberal" (That has a nice ring to it...); and Independence. If he loses the Independence line, he'll appear on two separate lines, Republican and Liberal.

Shades of John Lindsay indeed.

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